Jadekat Week Day 4: Lesson
by bardofspace
Summary: {Edited} Karkat meets Jade and his lusus having tea in a dream bubble.


Karkat woke up in his old hive. Everything was still the same. His poster were still up on the walls, his recuperacoon was still in place, his computer was left on, it's hums filling the room. He could even hear his lusus downstairs, going about his business. He supposed that he should go see him. He hadn't seen his lusus since he died nearly three years ago, not even in a dream bubble. He strolled down the stairs and into the kitchen, where he saw his lusus, sitting at the table with two cups of tea, talking to someone in black pyjamas with their back to Karkat. She had long dark hair cascading down her back, and white ears of a bark beast on her head.

"Jade?" He asked. Though he had never seen her in person, and this was his first time to see her in a dream bubble, he had seen her enough times on the computer as her patron troll before The Scratch to know what she looks like.

"Karkat?" She exclaimed when she turned around. "What are you doing here?"

"This is my hive." He said, as a matter of fact. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, so this is your lusus?" she asked. "Well, I met him just outside not too far away. We started talking, and he invited me inside."

"You understand what he's saying?" Karkat asked, not actually believing it.

"Of course she understands! She's not stupid you know!" His lusus shouted.

"We're in a dream bubble Karkat, anything goes." She told him.

"You're human friend is right." His lusus agreed.

"So what were you two talking about anyways?" Karkat asked, giving up trying to understand. They were difficult to deal with when they're by themselves. Now they were just impossible.

"Your lusus was just-"

"You can call me Crab Dad. A lot of people here call me that, and anyways, you wouldn't be able to pronounce my Alternian name."

"What's your Alternian name?" She asked with a smile. Crab Dad proceeded to make a series of clicking noises.

"Yes, I would not be able to say that." She agreed, the two of them laughing. Karkat didn't know how to feel about all this. He guessed it was good to see Jade and his lusus get along so well, but it still seemed really weird.

"Anyways, Crab Dad was telling me about the Signless Troll. I saw his portrait in another dream bubble a few nights ago." She explained. "I think it was outside your hive then as well." She added thoughtfully.

"There isn't a portrait of that douche bag outside my hive." He said, taken aback.

"There was then, I guess." She said, shrugging her shoulders. "Remember, dream bubbles. Anything goes."

"Ugh, you're just as annoying now as you were before. As if I need a lesson on dream bubbles." He sat down at the table beside, holding his head in his hands. He knew she was right, it was just all this dream bubble shit that was driving him crazy. She just laughed though, so she mustn't have taken much offence to what he said.

"Don't be mean to the nice Jade human! She is our guest!" Crab Dad sternly told him, waving a wooden spoon in has claw frantically at Karkat.

"So what was this about the Signless?" He asked, slightly nervous.

"We were just talking about him and the other trolls." She said. "I thought it was really cool, with him and the Disciple. It just sounds so beautiful." She beamed, like she was just after coming out of a really interesting history lesson. "And the whole mutant blood, under dog thing is pretty interesting, too. If that's even the right thing to call it."

"Yep, it's pretty great. Anyways, I have to go check something." He quickly excused himself. "See you later!"

That was getting dangerously close to a topic he didn't particularly want to discuss. He didn't want to be asked about blood colors, and he didn't know how he could answer Jade if she had asked, especially about his own blood. He banged he headed lightly on the wall he was sitting against, and pulled the grass up from under his hands. He told his friends back on the meteor, but he didn't want to be forced into a corner to talk about it. Maybe when they all landed and met up, he could tell Jade and John, about it. He just didn't think he had it in him now.

"Karkat?" Jade called out as her head peaked out from behind a wall. She saw him there, and looked relieved. "Is everything alright?"

"Um, yeah… I just still find the dream bubbles a bit weird I guess. He blatantly lied. Hopefully she wouldn't notice.

"That's ok. Crab Dad sent me to check on you." She said, as she sat down beside him. "We were worried about you. You left in a real panic."

"I'm all good here." He told her, a little to enthusiastically.

"You don't look all good." She said, skepticism clear in her voice. He always knew he wasn't the most convincing of people.

"It's just something I don't want to talk about right now. I will, I promise, just not now." He said, looking at his green stained hands.

"Okay…" She said slowly. "Look, I don't want to make you say what's wrong if you don't want to, but the longer you leave it the harder it might be to say later." He still couldn't look at her. It's been so long since they spoke. He had nearly convinced himself that the red feelings he had for her were gone, or maybe they weren't as strong as he thought they were, but here she was, in the same dream bubble as him, where she was just talking to his lusus in his hive. He even got here to call him Crab Dad. She was comforting him now, and though she didn't feel the same, he could except that for now. He wouldn't be able to tell her about his blood colour, not while she was trying to comfort him.

But it was the thing he wanted to say. It was the thing that was just on the tip of his tongue.

"For what it's worth," she went on. "Whatever it is that's bothering you, you know you can tell me at any time, right? I mean, sure, we're not in the same dream bubble all the time, but when we are you can, and when we all meet up as well."

"I have red blood." He burst out. Looking up, he waited for her reaction, but she just looked confused.

"Ok, I'm not very good with blood colours yet, so what does that mean?"

"I'm more or less the lowest of the common bloods." He explained simply, looking at the grass. "My kind is supposed to be extinct, because were mutants."

"You mean, like the Signless?" She asked, trying to make some sense of what he presumes she must think is "alien bullshit".

"Yeah. He's my ancestor." He filled in some of the blank spaces.

"And that's why you kept it a secret? To protect yourself, and so you wouldn't be judged." He nodded.

"That's actually so cool!" She said excitedly. "I mean, don't get me wrong, the hiding part is awful, and I don't want you to feel as if you have to do that around me, or any of us for that matter, but having red blood and the Signless as an ancestor, that part is pretty amazing."

"Yeah, I guess it kind of is." He said. "Jade… Thank you."

"For what?"

"You helped me learn an important lesson today, so thanks." He said, looking up at her, and she grinned at him, and all the things that worried him, just washed away.

**Thanks for reading!**


End file.
